


Two Months and New Scars

by ImmortalError



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Anxiouness, Kevin never wants to see another Nick Cage movie ever again, M/M, Post-Episode: s05e12 Safe House, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 12:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14977094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImmortalError/pseuds/ImmortalError
Summary: Kevin returns home from the safe house, it's both how he remembers it and how he doesn't remember it.





	Two Months and New Scars

When the door opened before Kevin, he was overwhelmed with a sense of unfamiliarity. Raymond was holding the door open for him, as he usually did. Only this time, Kevin’s feet felt like bricks. He couldn’t bring himself to take a step.

 

It was finally over. Two months in the safe house. Two months of a house that wasn’t his home. Two months of seemingly endless hours and nights that dragged on for so long he felt although time had frozen itself entirely.

 

So, when Kevin hesitated, he had a moment of realisation. When time froze, things changed.

 

Cheddar bought him back into the world. Woken him from his hypnotised state. Two months away from home had been difficult but what had been even more difficult was two months away from the world’s most gorgeous corgi. Kevin stepped inside, and the house could only be described as undisturbed. Everything was exactly as he’d left it. Raymond was one for precision, it was one of Kevin’s favourite qualities. Yet, a part of him expected something to be different.

 

Raymond acted as though the whole ordeal hadn’t occurred. He’d sat Kevin down and, with a first aid kit, did his best to treat Kevin’s hand. The knuckles were bruised in deep watercolours. Shades of purple washing over shades of green on a pale canvas that had become littered with dried beads of crimson. Raymond did his best to wipe away those beads, to wash the grazes clean and bandage the knuckles. Raymond payed no attention to his own wounds, the scuff marks on his wrists from the restraints didn’t even register mere importance.

 

Raymond had commented on Kevin’s one liner while making final adjustments to the bandage.

_Better get some corticosteroids to treat that laryngeal fracture._

He’d said it had been the best he’d heard, and that Peralta’s were always nonsensical and ridiculous. Dirt-bag was no insult, it was a very useful part of a vacuum cleaner. Kevin said he didn’t want to see another Nicholas Cage movie as long as he lived, nor anything even merely related to pizza. Raymond huffed a laugh and said,

“No more of that, you’re home now.”

 

Kevin was home, physically. Mentally, he often felt otherwise. A ridiculous state to be in, Kevin had decided. But he couldn’t move it, that sickly feeling of unease.

 

Kevin would struggle to sleep. It beckoned him so much so that it became a taunt. He wanted nothing more than the peace that came with unconsciousness, but it was just out of reach. And when sleep rarely did pull him under he felt as if he were drowning in it. Strange to suffocate while unconscious. So, he’d wake with a suddenness that nearly rendered him entirely conscious. Dark one second. Eyelids opened. Light the next second. No flutter of lashes nor stretching of muscles, he’d just become conscious.

 

More so then just conscious; hyper-vigilant.

 

The movements of trees in the wind outside, the distant rumble of cars, the beauty of the moonlight and the clouds disturbing all its glory. Kevin found himself watching and waiting without intending too. He was trying to find horrors lurking in the shadows. He’d watch those shadows grow and creep over everything he owned as tendrils of clouds crossed the moon.

 

So often he expected to turn and see Peralta. Peralta who, so often, mumbled the most incomprehensible and ridiculous sentences as he slept. Peralta who, although quite often an annoyance, had been growing on Kevin. A genuine, selfless man whose childishness was seeming more like an entertaining charm then an irritant by about a month into their stay.

 

So often Kevin expected to awaken and see a foreign room that was would so often resemble a cell. But when he turned and saw his husband, asleep in a perfect state of serenity, he remembered where he was. Careful not to wake his husband, he’d allow his fingertips to light grasp Raymond’s wrist. He’d run the pad of his thumb over the grazes and indents the binds had made. Kevin would see that scene replay over and over; Raymond strapped to a chair. Kevin would lie there staring at the ceiling, holding a wrist of healing skin, praying that when he fell asleep that he wouldn’t hear a gunshot.

 

As the sun rose, with it bought many opportunities. It was strange to think, all those days isolated just wishing for the freedom to do anything. He now had that freedom yet not an idea came to mind. Kevin would watch Raymond sleep as the sun began to rise, memorising every inch of his face, giving him something to focus on. He’d watch the colours of rose paint the rooms walls, fading into oranges and yellows as the sun climbed higher. Most mornings, Kevin felt as though Raymond was the only good thing left in the world.

 

Each day that passed was wearing on Kevin. His eyes sunk into his skull, his eyelids felt like weights he was not strong enough to hold up, the bags beneath his eyes were almost a dominate feature. He’d begun to chew on his lips, take fractions of skin with his teeth until little beads of blood told him to stop. Similarly, his thumb nail was being chewed to the bone. Habits were disgusting little things. But they were distractions, disgusting little distractions. Kevin assumed Raymond was noticing but keeping his thoughts to himself. Because Kevin was aware, he didn’t need the obvious pointed out to him.

 

Kevin was sat with Cheddar beside him. A book on his lap, his nail between his teeth. Raymond had been standing at the doorway, observing.  
“You’ve been scared of your own shadow recently.” Barely a sentence but one hell of a conversation starter.  
“Don’t be ridiculous Raymond.” Kevin didn’t look up from his book, Raymond sat beside him.  
“I am not engaging in ridiculousness, you have not slept. Have you not?”  
Shame swept Kevin’s expression, but he would not let Raymond win that easily.  
“A broad statement. I believe I have slept before.”  
Raymond rolled his eyes, a trait of Jake’s which he was picking up against his strongest will. Raymond took a seat beside Kevin and, when his husband didn’t respond, he outstretched an arm and swiped his thumb across Kevin’s lower lip. Lightly trailing the skin which was becoming rigid as it begun to heal.  
“You are as familiar with my scars just as I am familiar with your lack of them... these are new.”  
Kevin swallowed harshly, hoping all the fears would wash away as he did so. Kevin was familiar with all Raymond’s scars. Each had burnt patterns in Kevin’s mind, any harm that came to his husband was noted in specifics. Especially since his ‘light stabbing’.

“Talk to me, Kevin. There is no shame in it.”  
But there was shame in it. Raymond was a captain of a police precinct, he faced horror and danger ever damn day. Yet, despite that, he slept through the night.  
“On the contrary Raymond.” He didn’t mean to snap but the words left his tongue with a distinct bitterness. Angry at himself but directed at Raymond. “I stay in a safe house for two months and I rarely sleep. When I do sleep, all I see is the gun. I feel the whiplash. I hear the wall crumbling, the impact of the car hitting that man. I see those binds on your wrist.”  
Kevin took Raymond’s wrist, looking at the imprints and grazes. Broken skin.  
“It was my fault for leaving that safe house, with all your warnings. The last thing we did was bicker, if you’d been killed I...”  
“But I wasn’t killed. I’m here. I will always be here, so long as you are.”

Kevin smiled with real emotion for the first time since those two months.

“I don’t intend to go anywhere Raymond… even if it were to threaten my life.”  
He leant into Raymond’s palm cupping his cheek, moving it slightly to delicately place a kiss on his wrist. Soft lips on damaged skin. Kevin was never interested in bringing work-life into the home-life, Raymond had agreed to that. As he met his husband’s eyes, Kevin realised he truly believed the opposite. They could have hell rained down on them and, as long as Raymond was there, Kevin was staying put.

_Raymond was Kevin’s home._

**Author's Note:**

> My favourite episode so far, I love these two.


End file.
